Why Do We Start Doing Things Wrong After Learning to Do Them Right?
“They teach you how to do things RIGHT, but once you leave here, for some reason, you start doing them wrong.”
I clearly remember this sentence being said at a prestigious business school where I studied (quite a few) years ago. We learn concepts, methodologies, and the (great) importance of knowing how to model, but after a while, we seem to assimilate that theoretical doctrine as if it were exclusively that: a theory that should not be applied, and for which we have sometimes paid a hefty sum of money.
The Gap Between Theory and Practice in Business
We accompany it, moreover, with case studies, which we analyze to try to decipher what happened. Theory and empirical validation, which does not elevate it to absolute truth, but validates it. “They teach you how to do things, but once you leave here, for some reason, you start doing them wrong.” This sentence can be difficult to appreciate in all its magnitude at certain points in our professional life, requiring maturity and sometimes the experience of working in different organizations to see that, indeed, it is something that happens.
Companies Don’t Exist—People Make the Decisions
“A company, as such in terms of its uniqueness, does not exist. A company is a group of people structured by functional areas and hierarchies, with processes and relationship models that generate workflows oriented towards a series of objectives and sub-objectives. The “company” does not act badly. Nor well. It does not breathe, nor does it have a character, nor preferences, nor has it woken up in a bad mood.”
How Corporate Culture Shapes Decision-Making
Just like “physical” people, companies convey a personality or archetype (or several) through their brands, which is defined and assigned… by people. That personality can reach a certain degree of complexity, but it is inferred and responds to a rationale. We could agree that Nestlé is a caretaker. That’s how it is perceived, but that’s also how it orients its actions to be perceived in that way. Behavior can be modulated and adapted over time, but it does not flow without control. People within the company decide how they want to work.
Mistakes vs. Bad Practices: Understanding the Difference
It is important to discriminate between “mistakes”, which we all make and normalize because they are often the catalyst for future successes, and something else: an action or behavior that is deliberate and accepted. It is not true that we should do things wrong. It is in our hands to do them right.
When Poor Work Habits Become the Norm
Obviously, there will be restrictions, difficulties, and (perhaps) insurmountable obstacles at times. But always (always) everything ends up in decisions in the hands of people, who, when the time comes, choose how to act.
(The “bad”?) practices may already be very ingrained, and we can consider them as democratically distributed. It happens in Marketing or in Human Resources. At C-Level or Middle management.
The Hiring Process: A Reflection of Work Ethics
I have just finished a selection process where I needed to fill 3 positions for a Marketing team. All the candidates I have seen, both in person and remotely, were there because they could solve the need generated by a vacancy.
Recruitment Done Right: Transparency and Respect
I have a need and you can be the person who solves it. A vacancy that, and I had to emphasize this to each candidate, was REAL. We were not justifying manager and/or HR people’s time, filling their agendas with no other objective than that same: filling time. We were not prospecting (equivalent to “We’re going to spend the afternoon taking a walk around the candidates’ park, and then we’ll go home. That’s a good plan“). I did not make each candidate work more than strictly necessary, asking them for documented plans about “what they are going to execute in their first year in detail”: just enough to delve deeper into their skills and attitudes to be able to make the best decision. I did not propose complex cases whose hidden objective was for external people to provide value for free to the interviewer. I did none of that, but all this has happened. All this happens. Let’s take a walk through LinkedIn or talk directly to people in our network of contacts. As true as it is that there are people who have decided to work well, others decide to do it poorly.
I informed all the candidates that they would always have brief and clear feedback in the event of not moving forward with their candidacy, and always positively: no shortcomings would be argued, but rather the other qualities perceived in another candidate. The reaction in terms of both verbal and non-verbal language was: 1. Small surprise, and 2. Satisfaction. Surprise, due to the normalization of certain practices: “I had not been in a process with this level of frankness lately. I really appreciate it.” Satisfaction, because they understood as valuable non-automated and concrete feedback, where first of all we always thanked their participation.
Breaking the Cycle: How to Choose to Work Better
“Things can always be done differently. Beyond restrictions and bureaucracies, we can always choose. There is no generational bias, or even by gender. Reactions from people of Generation Y (Millennials) and Generation Z were the same, which validate that you CAN do things differently and that it IS appreciated when they’re done better.”
Small Changes That Can Transform Workplaces
[Not all companies behave poorly. Because companies, in the end, are made up of people who decide how to work. The company does not exist—people do, and their choices shape the workplace for better or worse].
